Cancer therapy research to benefit from supercomputer award

26 March 2013

UCL researchers studying molecular cancer therapies are using top US supercomputers to accelerate their work. Following a grant from The National Institute of Health, via the US National Resource for Biomedical Supercomputing, the team has been able to progress their work with the American supercomputer ANTON.

Professor Peter Coveney, Dr Flemming Hansen, Dr Dave Wright, Dr Shunzhou Wan & Mr Micha Kunze (UCL Chemistry) have been investigating potential targets for novel cancer therapies. Access to ANTON will enable the team to simulate protein-folding mechanisms in order to identify proteins that could be targeted by new drug therapies.

ANTON, developed by the DE Shaw Group, is the world's fastest supercomputer for performing protein-folding and related biomolecular simulations. The award runs for three years, is for over 8 days of consecutive computing time at the Pittsburg Supercomputing Center, with an equivalent value of approximately £250,000.

The proposal was written by Micha Kunze, Dr David Wright, Dr Flemming Hansen and Professor Peter Coveney, and forms a centrepiece of Micha's Wellcome Trust-funded PhD research.